EXCLUSIVE TO FOX: Academics from Rutgers University and various other institutions have rallied around their colleague, Mark Bray, contributing to an online fundraising campaign after Bray relocated to Spain amid President Donald Trump’s announcement of intensified measures against Antifa and its supporters.
The fundraising effort, which extends support to both Bray and his wife, Yesenia Barragan—a fellow Rutgers professor—has surpassed $42,000 as of Wednesday. An analysis of the contributors reveals significant backing from their academic peers.
Among those donating from Rutgers are associate history professor Jamie Pietruska, assistant history professor Jack Bouchard, and history professor Aldo Lauria, all contributing undisclosed amounts. Others include Jochen Hellbeck, a history professor and Vice Chair for Graduate Education, history professor emerita Temma Kaplan who donated $450, and French professor emeritus François Cornilliat who contributed $100.
Mark Bray, who serves as an assistant professor of history at Rutgers, was seen in a hotel room in Newark, New Jersey, preparing for his flight to Spain scheduled for Thursday, October 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey)
Support has also flowed in from academics at other institutions around the nation.
Celso Thomas Castilho, an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University, donated $150. Manisha Sinha, a history professor at the University of Connecticut, contributed $200, while Raquel Otheguy, an assistant professor of history at Bronx Community College, added $50 to the cause.
Fox News Digital reached out to the professors who donated.
Overall, 518 people have donated to Bray and his wife’s fundraiser, which was launched on the platform Freefunder by someone called Dray Bal, an apparent friend of the couple.
“We are reaching out to you with a humble request for support as our friends make a sudden move out of the country for their safety,” the fundraiser’s description says, adding that Bray has been “violently targeted by conservative groups.”
Mark Bray, a Rutgers assistant professor of history, and his wife, Yesenia Barragan, a Rutgers associate professor of history, wait in their hotel room in Newark, N.J., before a planned flight to Spain on Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey)
“He and his partner, our friend and comrade Yesenia Barragan, also a professor at Rutgers, have made the decision to leave the country to protect their family,” the description continues.
Bray was dubbed “Dr. Antifa” in a Rutgers Turning Point USA petition to have him removed from campus. The far-left professor announced that he was moving to Europe after receiving threats and having his address doxxed.
He is the author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” which openly calls for “militant anti-fascism.” That book says that “at the very least 50 percent of author proceeds will go to the International Anti-Fascist Defense Fund which is administered by more than three hundred antifa from eighteen countries.”
In a recent post on Bluesky, Bray said, “Only mass antifascism, legal or not, can save us.”
Students of Rutgers University set up Gaza solidarity encampment at a New Jersey university on the Rutgers-Newark campus in Newark on May 21, 2024. (Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Antifa is a far-left militant movement that pitches itself as an “antifascist” activist group. It has been accused of spreading violence through riots, most notably during the 2020 defund the police and Black Lives Matter riots, as well as more recently in Antifa-linked attacks on federal immigration officials and facilities in Texas and Illinois.
Trump recently declared Antifa a domestic terror organization, and has suggested that his administration is looking into organized funding of Antifa protesters.
“It should be clear to all Americans that we have a very serious left-wing terror threat in our country, radicals associated with the domestic terror group Antifa that you’ve heard a lot about lately,” he said at a roundtable last week. “And I’ve heard a lot about them for 10 years, and other far-left extremists have been carrying out a campaign of violence against ICE agents and other officials charged with enforcing federal law.”
President Donald Trump designated Antifa a domestic terrorist organization via a September 2025 executive order. (Diego Diaz/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Rutgers did not respond to a request for comment.
